DEEP message to the school system!
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Let's Help Our Young People Unlearn What White Supremacy Taught Them
True story. The other day I was recording an episode of my podcast with 11th graders at a school on the far south-side of Chicago. During our conversation
educationpost.org
Let’s Help Our Young People Unlearn What White Supremacy Taught Them
POSTED FEB. 7, 2020 IN BETTER CONVERSATION
Tanesha Peeples is the Deputy Director of Outreach for Education Post. Her mission is to use her education, passion and experience to empower marginalized populations. Born and raised on Chicago’s South Side, she is a Chicago Public Schools alumna and proud Englewoodian. Check out her blogging about “Hope and Outrage.” FULL PROFILE →
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The other day I was recording an episode of my podcast with 11th graders at a school on the far south-side of Chicago. During our conversation about their experiences as Black students in a historically racist public school system and the inequitable distribution of resources, one of the young ladies began her response to a question with, “Well, because they [White people on the north-side] are more high-class …”
Everything she said after “high-class” sounded like, “Womp, womp, womp, womp … womp” because I was having my own conversation in my head:
This mentality—this thinking right here is the acid that has persistently eroded Black Americans’ sense of identity and value, individually and collectively.
The notion that we’re “less than” has been reinforced by White privilege, mainstream media that loves to perpetuate colorism, oppressive institutions and prejudiced ideological constructs dating back to the day we stepped foot on this land as enslaved Africans.
So after that moment of clarity, I took a break from recording to address the comment. The young lady seemed embarrassed and apologized profusely, believing she’d said something wrong. I assured her that there was nothing to be sorry for, affirmed her identity and presence as an intelligent, strong, worthy, young Black woman and topped it off with, “It’s okay—we all have some unlearning to do. But now you know.”
THE ILLUSION OF INFERIORITY HAS BEEN A CURSE IN OUR COMMUNITIES FOR GENERATIONSWhile Black History Month is the perfect time to begin some of this unlearning, I don’t expect any of us to go hard for 29 days (we’re in a leap year) and emerge on March 1st as brand new Black people. Realistically, the illusion of inferiority has been a curse in our communities for generations, so to gradually shift from that brainwashing to self-actualization will take time.
But the journey has to begin somewhere and I think the best place to start is with chipping away at the faith we have in our public school system.
Even though I fantasize about every Black parent snatching their child out of public schools to bankrupt the system, I know throwing the whole thing away will have a negative effect on us, too (similar to the aftermath of Brown v. Board when Black educators lost their jobs and our communities were further destabilized). But if you’re one of those people who think the public school system is doing everything it can for Black kids, let me let you know right now that it’s not. In fact, it was never designed to truly educate Black kids. If you need receipts, here you go:
- First, why would a country that once persecuted our ancestors for attempting to learn how to read and then later enact laws that put restrictions on the extent to which we could learn have a change of heart? It wouldn’t—a leopard doesn’t change its spots.
- Second, if we don’t trust the criminal “justice” system, why would we trust a public school system built by the same White men whose main interests are protecting their power and privilege? The public school system grooms Black people at an early age to enter into the criminal “justice” system by reprimanding, suspending and expelling them from school at disproportionate rates—impressing upon these young minds that they’re delinquents. And they’ve strategically built the school-to-prison pipeline to not only deter Black people from getting an education, but to continue the industry of profiting off of chattel slavery through mass incarceration. It’s all connected.
- Third, the system has mostly taught our Black kids that their history in the U.S. begins with slavery, ends with Dr. Martin Luther King having a dream and depicts Malcolm X and the Black Panthers as unruly negroes. The deliberate erasure of our contributions, movements and cultural evolution from the traditional system purposely perpetuates inferiority.
Is there an “achievement” gap? Nah. Is there an opportunity gap? Hell yeah!
These are just a few examples of where we can start. But, we’d be irresponsible not to coalesce this unlearning with self-taught knowledge for the purposes of affirming cultural identity and communal empowerment.
WE NEED TO KNOW WHO AND WHERE WE CAME FROM—GREATNESS, STRUGGLE AND GLORIOUS OVERCOMING—TO DEVELOP A CLEAR VISION OF WHERE WE’RE GOING AND HOW TO GET THERE.The way I see it is, Sankofa is our foundation and the principles of Kwanzaa are our building blocks. We need to know who and where we came from—greatness, struggle and glorious overcoming—to develop a clear vision of where we’re going and how to get there.
This means creating our own supplemental educational systems that disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline and help our kids to realize their full potential. We have to become scholars of our own history, tell those stories and set our own standards for success and excellence. And we have to assume the power this country is so afraid of us having.
I think I’m making this all sound easy, but it won’t be. We have over 400 years of unlearning and learning to do. In fact, the process of unhinging ourselves from believing in the education system alone seems cumbersome.
THE PERCEIVED “RISK” OF UNLEARNING IS NOT ONLY NECESSARY, IT’S ABSOLUTELY WORTH THE REWARD OF DISCOVERING OURSELVES.Buy y’all, the perceived “risk” of unlearning is not only necessary, it’s absolutely worth the reward of discovering ourselves. If we just take it one step at a time, we can get there. Start right now during Black History Month and take every opportunity to instill in a young person that they’re worthy, valuable, destined for greatness and most definitely high-class.
SHARE THIS HOPE + OUTRAGEI want to start a movement where people of color feel compelled and empowered to advocate for better education, so every week I’m sharing some HOPE and OUTRAGE right here. But I’m not writing this to be famous, I’m doing this because our youth need all of us in this fight.
SO SHARE IT OUT RIGHT NOW →
Good post, bruh!! I'm with you, we gotta somehow find a way to shatter all these damn lies!! Everything we've seen on tv, media, books and from these miseducation center, is in reverse and straight up lies!! We're crazy if we think these colonist or pilgrims would ever tell us the truth about who or what we are!! The truth is hidden right in front of our faces!
Bruh, you aint kiddin!! The sad thing is, aint nobody listening!! So, the misinformation carries on and on!! Its no different than this so called Dream/trance!! The dream was never geared for us, but somehow a large percentage of our people bought deep into it!!
How American school systems destroy Black students and educators
Ricky L. Jones
Opinion contributor
Americans love good stories and movies — especially those with happy endings. Here’s one for you. Let’s call this epic, “Houston, We Have a Problem.” The star is a fellow largely lost to history named Charles Hamilton Houston. You feel free to choose the leading man. Personally, I always default to Denzel.
Houston is born in 1895 a few months after Frederick Douglass dies. If souls travel, Douglass’ landed in Houston. In 1896, the United States Supreme Court delivers the Plessy v. Ferguson decision, which makes “separate but equal” the law of the land and calcifies Jim Crow. The young Houston will grow up to dedicate his life to destroying that system.
Despite being the only Black student in his class at Amherst College, Houston graduates valedictorian in 1915. He fights in World War I, returns home and graduates from Harvard Law School in 1923, where he was the first Black student elected to the editorial board of the Harvard Law Review.
Houston goes on to teach and serve as dean of Howard University’s law school where he trains an impressive cadre of young Black lawyers. In 1935, he leaves Howard and joins the NAACP as its first special counsel. He brings a number of his former students along with him, including a young Thurgood Marshall. Houston’s team works for years on case after case to overturn Plessy and kill Jim Crow.
In 1954, they win Brown v. Board of Education (Topeka, Kansas), which rules “separate but equal” is “inherently unequal” and legal American school segregation ends.
The good guys win. Plessy falls. Separate but equal ends. Black kids and white kids can now lock arms, learn together and all is well. The credits roll. John Legend sings an inspiring song. And we all live happily ever after.
Well ... not exactly.
Yes, school systems were ordered to desegregate with “all deliberate speed,” but many were very deliberate in their resistance and not very speedy in their integration. The pushback in some places was outright vicious. Georgia, for example, not only resisted desegregation but also opted to change its state flag to a more pronounced version of the Confederate flag in 1956 to reaffirm white supremacy in direct response to Brown.
Other systems were less obvious, but just as injurious. They followed the federal mandate and allowed Black children into their schools, but at a steep price — they fired almost all the Black teachers. Black children as young as 5 years old were now thrust into school systems with curricula that never mentioned them, teachers who cared nothing about them and expected little of them. To this day, these problems persist.
A 2016 Johns Hopkins study reaffirmed what many of us already knew — “race plays a big role in influencing how teachers see their students’ potential for academic success.” The Washington Post stated the obvious in summarizing the study “raised questions about whether teachers’ biases could be holding back Black students and contributing to the nation’s yawning achievement gap.”
One damning finding was, “When a white (or other non-Black) teacher and a Black teacher evaluate the same Black student, the white teacher is 30% less likely to believe that the student will graduate from a four-year college — and 40% less likely to believe the student will graduate from high school.”
The attacks on the psyches of Black students and careers of Black educators wasn’t restricted to K-12 systems. In many ways, higher education was (and is) even worse. For example, the University of Louisville, where I’m currently employed, has a dark history in this area. Beginning in 1931, U of L maintained Louisville Municipal College for Negroes, a separate, segregated branch for almost two decades.
Case study:Here's how white JCPS parents are keeping their kids out of West End schools
Louisville integrated in 1950, but again, there was a nasty little catch. U of L informed the Black professors from Municipal that all of them, save ONE, would be fired. They allowed the Black professors to choose the lone scholar whose career wouldn’t be all but ruined. They chose Dr. Charles Parrish — another Black man who served alone.
The university’s Black faculty numbers remain paltry until this day.
None of what we’re facing on the educational front is new. The achievement gap and other educational ills are all explainable and rooted in a terrible, intentional history of racial marginalization and insensitivity. Even now we see attacks on student assignment plans, busing and other measures designed to combat segregation.
It is not an overstatement to say Black educators and students literally struggle to maintain their sanity in American educational pressure cookers. It’s so bad in many respects that some are starting to wonder if segregation may, in fact, be better.
As for Charles Hamilton Houston, the struggle killed him. He died of a heart attack in 1950 at the age of 54. His old student and mentee, Thurgood Marshall, would serve as the lead attorney on the Brown case. Marshall, who would go on to become the United States’ first Black Supreme Court Justice, once said of Houston, “We (Houston’s mentees and colleagues) were only worthy of carrying his bags.” Tragically, like Moses, Houston never entered the promised land he worked so hard to reach.
If only reality were as neat as the movies.
Ricky L. Jones is a professor and political philosopher with degrees from Morehouse College and the University of Kentucky. He is also the host of iHeart Media’s award-winning “Ricky Jones Show.” His column appears bi-weekly in the Courier-Journal. Visit him at rickyljones.com.
Ricky L. Jones
Opinion contributor
Americans love good stories and movies — especially those with happy endings. Here’s one for you. Let’s call this epic, “Houston, We Have a Problem.” The star is a fellow largely lost to history named Charles Hamilton Houston. You feel free to choose the leading man. Personally, I always default to Denzel.
Houston is born in 1895 a few months after Frederick Douglass dies. If souls travel, Douglass’ landed in Houston. In 1896, the United States Supreme Court delivers the Plessy v. Ferguson decision, which makes “separate but equal” the law of the land and calcifies Jim Crow. The young Houston will grow up to dedicate his life to destroying that system.
Despite being the only Black student in his class at Amherst College, Houston graduates valedictorian in 1915. He fights in World War I, returns home and graduates from Harvard Law School in 1923, where he was the first Black student elected to the editorial board of the Harvard Law Review.
Houston goes on to teach and serve as dean of Howard University’s law school where he trains an impressive cadre of young Black lawyers. In 1935, he leaves Howard and joins the NAACP as its first special counsel. He brings a number of his former students along with him, including a young Thurgood Marshall. Houston’s team works for years on case after case to overturn Plessy and kill Jim Crow.
In 1954, they win Brown v. Board of Education (Topeka, Kansas), which rules “separate but equal” is “inherently unequal” and legal American school segregation ends.
The good guys win. Plessy falls. Separate but equal ends. Black kids and white kids can now lock arms, learn together and all is well. The credits roll. John Legend sings an inspiring song. And we all live happily ever after.
Well ... not exactly.
Yes, school systems were ordered to desegregate with “all deliberate speed,” but many were very deliberate in their resistance and not very speedy in their integration. The pushback in some places was outright vicious. Georgia, for example, not only resisted desegregation but also opted to change its state flag to a more pronounced version of the Confederate flag in 1956 to reaffirm white supremacy in direct response to Brown.
Other systems were less obvious, but just as injurious. They followed the federal mandate and allowed Black children into their schools, but at a steep price — they fired almost all the Black teachers. Black children as young as 5 years old were now thrust into school systems with curricula that never mentioned them, teachers who cared nothing about them and expected little of them. To this day, these problems persist.
A 2016 Johns Hopkins study reaffirmed what many of us already knew — “race plays a big role in influencing how teachers see their students’ potential for academic success.” The Washington Post stated the obvious in summarizing the study “raised questions about whether teachers’ biases could be holding back Black students and contributing to the nation’s yawning achievement gap.”
One damning finding was, “When a white (or other non-Black) teacher and a Black teacher evaluate the same Black student, the white teacher is 30% less likely to believe that the student will graduate from a four-year college — and 40% less likely to believe the student will graduate from high school.”
The attacks on the psyches of Black students and careers of Black educators wasn’t restricted to K-12 systems. In many ways, higher education was (and is) even worse. For example, the University of Louisville, where I’m currently employed, has a dark history in this area. Beginning in 1931, U of L maintained Louisville Municipal College for Negroes, a separate, segregated branch for almost two decades.
Case study:Here's how white JCPS parents are keeping their kids out of West End schools
Louisville integrated in 1950, but again, there was a nasty little catch. U of L informed the Black professors from Municipal that all of them, save ONE, would be fired. They allowed the Black professors to choose the lone scholar whose career wouldn’t be all but ruined. They chose Dr. Charles Parrish — another Black man who served alone.
The university’s Black faculty numbers remain paltry until this day.
None of what we’re facing on the educational front is new. The achievement gap and other educational ills are all explainable and rooted in a terrible, intentional history of racial marginalization and insensitivity. Even now we see attacks on student assignment plans, busing and other measures designed to combat segregation.
It is not an overstatement to say Black educators and students literally struggle to maintain their sanity in American educational pressure cookers. It’s so bad in many respects that some are starting to wonder if segregation may, in fact, be better.
As for Charles Hamilton Houston, the struggle killed him. He died of a heart attack in 1950 at the age of 54. His old student and mentee, Thurgood Marshall, would serve as the lead attorney on the Brown case. Marshall, who would go on to become the United States’ first Black Supreme Court Justice, once said of Houston, “We (Houston’s mentees and colleagues) were only worthy of carrying his bags.” Tragically, like Moses, Houston never entered the promised land he worked so hard to reach.
If only reality were as neat as the movies.
Ricky L. Jones is a professor and political philosopher with degrees from Morehouse College and the University of Kentucky. He is also the host of iHeart Media’s award-winning “Ricky Jones Show.” His column appears bi-weekly in the Courier-Journal. Visit him at rickyljones.com.
Warriors of African Consciousness
COLLEGE SLAVERY: Our Children Must Not Fall Victims.
Children must be taught how to think, not what to think. The difference between school and life? In school, you're taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you're given a test that teaches you a lesson.
The capitalist educational system is designed to brainwash you into a good, little, obedient, conformist, consumerist, dog.
When you go to college you're basically paying to have someone brainwash you until you're a perfect corporate robot.
The grading system is used to test your ability to withstand and absorb corporate oppression without any resistance.
College trains you to anticipate a future in which your biggest excitement is retirement.
College is designed to make you feel that your teachers are brilliant when they're just dumb mentally-obedient people.
College is designed to train you in the art of submission to the corporate rulers of society.
College is designed to train you in the art of submission to the corporate rulers of society.
College prepares you to be a wage-slave whose goal in life is a quiet, passive, retirement.
College prepares you for a gentle political and social sleep, for a life in which you are nothing but an economical slave.
Your teachers are no teachers at all. They are slave trainers paid to mold you into a perfect little wage-slave.
- Shared by Comrade Augustine Ogechukwu Nwulia
Just wondering is the Big Push to get children back in school is because they are scared of their BS school system being exposed for what it really is and us teaching our children different to set them up for real success and the history they try desperately to hide. I'm still kind of fucked up here in VA when I was told they wont teach or don't have to teach cursive writing in public school. Before this virus started by the grace of God we got all my grand children enrolled in STEM schools and there is a giant difference in the learning curve above all the one thing I do love about the STEM schools they don't hold back on any history good or bad which was very surprising.
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Warriors of African Consciousness
COLLEGE SLAVERY: Our Children Must Not Fall Victims.
Children must be taught how to think, not what to think. The difference between school and life? In school, you're taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you're given a test that teaches you a lesson.
The capitalist educational system is designed to brainwash you into a good, little, obedient, conformist, consumerist, dog.
When you go to college you're basically paying to have someone brainwash you until you're a perfect corporate robot.
The grading system is used to test your ability to withstand and absorb corporate oppression without any resistance.
College trains you to anticipate a future in which your biggest excitement is retirement.
College is designed to make you feel that your teachers are brilliant when they're just dumb mentally-obedient people.
College is designed to train you in the art of submission to the corporate rulers of society.
College is designed to train you in the art of submission to the corporate rulers of society.
College prepares you to be a wage-slave whose goal in life is a quiet, passive, retirement.
College prepares you for a gentle political and social sleep, for a life in which you are nothing but an economical slave.
Your teachers are no teachers at all. They are slave trainers paid to mold you into a perfect little wage-slave.
- Shared by Comrade Augustine Ogechukwu Nwulia
Well said, bruh!!! Ive been saying these indoctrination centers aka schools only job is to teach us the same stuff every year and thats just enuf to do the jobs the 1% have for us to do!!
“Never confuse education with intelligence.” – Albert Einstein
“I don’t want a nation of thinkers, I want a nation of workers.” – John D Rockefeller
“In our dream we have limitless resources, and the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hand. The present educational conventions fade from our minds; and, unhampered by tradition, we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive rural folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or of science. We are not to raise up among them authors, orators, poets, or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians. Nor will we cherish even the humbler ambition to raise up from among them lawyers, doctors, preachers, statesmen, of whom we now have ample supply.” – Frederick T Gates
Another question why is it always public school that always have to suffer when it comes to state budget cuts when we where always told that money from the state lottery was paying a large portion of school needs but here only 10% goes to schools here in VA when I was in school in The D back in the late 70s and early 90s school had all kind of money for all types of programs and about 95 96 it all went to shit than they sold everyone on how the Casinos would help the school system and that was straight 
. I also remember when they tried to make home schooling illegal, as a kid back then I didn't understand why but now as a adult I know why
. I also remember when they tried to make home schooling illegal, as a kid back then I didn't understand why but now as a adult I know why
What piece of financial advice is hard to explain to others?
Originally Answered: Which is one financial advice hard to explain to others?
In January 1914, Henry Ford announced he would start paying his workers a remarkable $5 a day.
It was compared to a gold rush …
Overnight, over 10,000 men arrived at Ford’s plant in search of employment opportunity.
Did Mr. Ford have a problem finding workers?
It doesn’t seem so … right?
Who had the problem?
The massive amount of people needing work had the problem!
Imagine how motivated people were to work for Mr. Ford. Imagine how competitive the job application process was, Imagine how picky Mr. Ford could be when picking his workers.
10,000 men were outside asking for a chance at a job!
Maybe a few hundred got hired every day — but who was in control?
Mr Ford or the people?
Here’s a little secret: in economics, when demand remains constant (or gets reduced), oversupply pushes the price of a commodity DOWN!
This is probably the most important graph you should remember for the rest of your life.
Why?
Because if you’re a commodity in the marketplace, you’re being depreciated.
The more people who want your job, the cheaper your job will become.
But it gets worse … automation is also working hard to take over your job. White collar, or blue collar, they don’t care. It wants your job if it can do it more cheaply!
The more technology can do the same job you have, the cheaper your job will become.
Did your teachers teach you this at school?
Oh, maybe they forgot to or they ignored it…
Well, sorry to burst the college bubble you’ve been SOLD.
Did they offer any guarantee? “Get a job or get your money back?” Maybe “your student debt cancelled?” Or are they “growing their stadiums?”
No guarantee?
Now, let me answer your question, what is one financial piece of advice hard to explain to others?
You will never be able to achieve financial freedom by implementing all your expensive college skills.
Never!
If that was an investment, that’s a bad investment.
Where should you focus your efforts?
1- Know that every single cent you make in your life will come from other people, NOT from machines, the computers or the smartphones you love so much.
2- ALL people care about is themselves. They don’t care how hard you work or how many degrees you have. All they care about is what you can GIVE them to improve THEIR lives.
3- STOP trying to improve your life (adding more degrees) trying to increase the value of your paycheck, based of what you can DO.
4- Focus on serving OTHERS. Focus on improving their lives, by GIVING them value, so you may get compensated for what you DELIVER.
REMEMBER: In an economy of abundance, nobody cares about your value — value is found delivering to other people what THEY want.
Originally Answered: Which is one financial advice hard to explain to others?
In January 1914, Henry Ford announced he would start paying his workers a remarkable $5 a day.
It was compared to a gold rush …
Overnight, over 10,000 men arrived at Ford’s plant in search of employment opportunity.
Did Mr. Ford have a problem finding workers?
It doesn’t seem so … right?
Who had the problem?
The massive amount of people needing work had the problem!
Imagine how motivated people were to work for Mr. Ford. Imagine how competitive the job application process was, Imagine how picky Mr. Ford could be when picking his workers.
10,000 men were outside asking for a chance at a job!
Maybe a few hundred got hired every day — but who was in control?
Mr Ford or the people?
Here’s a little secret: in economics, when demand remains constant (or gets reduced), oversupply pushes the price of a commodity DOWN!
This is probably the most important graph you should remember for the rest of your life.
Why?
Because if you’re a commodity in the marketplace, you’re being depreciated.
The more people who want your job, the cheaper your job will become.
But it gets worse … automation is also working hard to take over your job. White collar, or blue collar, they don’t care. It wants your job if it can do it more cheaply!
The more technology can do the same job you have, the cheaper your job will become.
Did your teachers teach you this at school?
Oh, maybe they forgot to or they ignored it…
Well, sorry to burst the college bubble you’ve been SOLD.
Did they offer any guarantee? “Get a job or get your money back?” Maybe “your student debt cancelled?” Or are they “growing their stadiums?”
No guarantee?
Now, let me answer your question, what is one financial piece of advice hard to explain to others?
You will never be able to achieve financial freedom by implementing all your expensive college skills.
Never!
If that was an investment, that’s a bad investment.
Where should you focus your efforts?
1- Know that every single cent you make in your life will come from other people, NOT from machines, the computers or the smartphones you love so much.
2- ALL people care about is themselves. They don’t care how hard you work or how many degrees you have. All they care about is what you can GIVE them to improve THEIR lives.
3- STOP trying to improve your life (adding more degrees) trying to increase the value of your paycheck, based of what you can DO.
4- Focus on serving OTHERS. Focus on improving their lives, by GIVING them value, so you may get compensated for what you DELIVER.
REMEMBER: In an economy of abundance, nobody cares about your value — value is found delivering to other people what THEY want.
Great read
Good video. People may think it is strange but you can do what is right in an artificial world but you are still wrong until you can free yourself from that world and it's control.
I wish I could speak a lot of different languages. But the main thing is being free and breaking the control.
I wish I could speak a lot of different languages. But the main thing is being free and breaking the control.
dope
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_57ea8bb3e4b024a52d2aa517
Yes, Preschool Teachers Really Do Treat Black And White Children Totally Differently
“Implicit biases do not begin with black men and police, they begin with young black boys and their preschool teachers, if not earlier.”
09/27/2016 07:30 pm ET | Updated 1 day ago
Rebecca Klein
Education Editor, The Huffington Post
When Tunette Powell’s 4-year-old son first got suspended from his preschool class in 2014, she assumed that she needed to be doing something different as a parent. She had already worked hard to enrich her children’s lives, but she challenged herself to be better.
The second time her son JJ got suspended, Powell began to think that maybe it was “just the fate” of her child. When Powell was in school, she had been suspended many times from a young age, and she began to think, “Maybe the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
Her thinking only turned around after she attended a birthday party for one of her son’s preschool classmates. Powell and her children are black, but most of the other parents at the party were white. When she mentioned to the group that her son had been suspended for behaviors like allegedly throwing a chair, they were shocked. Their kids had committed worse behaviors, but were only punished with a phone call home.
Her younger son, 3-year-old Joah, also faced a number of suspensions at school. Powell began to consider that maybe something more insidious was working against her children.
Tunette Powell’s sons, Joah and JJ.
New research released Tuesday backs up Powell’s suspicions. A two-part study out of the Yale Child Study Center shows that preschool teachers respond to their black and white students differently. Implicit biases ― or unconscious stereotypes ― might be at the root of these differences, researchers found.
The research is the first-of-its-kind at the preschool level, said study author and Yale professor Walter Gilliam. Black children are 3.6 times more likely to receive a suspension in preschool than their white classmates, according to 2013-2014 data from the Department of Education. But, “until now, no research existed to explain why boys or black preschoolers are at greatest risk for expulsion,” Gilliam said on a call with reporters.
The first half of the study used eye-tracking equipment to determine where teachers look when they are expecting student misconduct.
Researchers had 132 educators watch videos featuring a diverse group of students and primed them to expect student misbehavior. Although no misbehavior actually occurred in the videos, teachers tended to focus their eyes on black students. This suggests that educators expected black students to act out more than other students.
In the second half of the study, the educators read vignettes about a child’s misbehavior. All of the educators read the same vignette, but the students’ names were different. Some teachers were told the child had a traditionally black name, like LaToya, while others were told the child had a stereotypically white name, like Emily. After reading the vignette, researchers asked teachers to rate the severity of the child’s misconduct.
White teachers tended to rate the behavior of the “black” children more mildly than black teachers, who tended to rate the misbehavior of black children more harshly. However, when teachers were told that the child faced a difficult home life, black educators tended to view black children with more empathy, while white educators viewed them as more hopeless. On the other hand, when the same scenario occurred for the “white” students, white teachers tended to view the children with more empathy, while black educators viewed them as more hopeless.
There are a few possible explanations for these behaviors, researchers hypothesize. White teachers might have lower expectations for black students, so they might not see a black child’s misbehavior as particularly unusual or severe. On the other hand, white educators might be self-conscious about giving negative reviews to black children, although this would not explain why they seemed to expect misbehavior in the first half of the study. Black educators might be trying to prepare their black students for a harsh world, researchers speculate.
The researchers did not find a relationship between child race or sex and a teacher’s decision to expel or suspend, “contrary to hypotheses,” says the study.
According to Gilliam, a teacher’s implicit biases can have a big impact on a child’s future.
“Implicit bias is like the wind, you can’t see it but you can sure see its effects,” Gilliam said. “Implicit biases do not begin with black men and police, they begin with young black boys and their preschool teachers, if not earlier.”
Implicit bias is like the wind, you can’t see it but you can sure see its effects.
In the study’s conclusion, researchers suggest that preschool teachers get continual training and guidance on this topic. On a call with reporters, early childhood expert and government official Linda Smith said the study’s conclusions are “far too important for us to ignore.”
“The early childhood field has its roots in social justice. We’ve been fighting for a number of years for resources for our most vulnerable children and their families,” said Smith, who is the deputy assistant secretary for early childhood development at the Administration for Children and Families. “The findings presented today present us with a real challenge that all of us know is not new, but one we haven’t really been addressing with the same rigor as some of these other challenges.”
After seeing how implicit biases were playing out in her sons’ lives, Powell began to dedicate her life to fighting them. In total, Powell’s older son, JJ, was suspended three times from preschool, while her younger son, Joah, was suspended eight times.
However, once JJ entered kindergarten, his apparent behavioral problems disappeared. And when her son Joah got different preschool teachers, he seemed to thrive. The children are now 7- and 5-years-old, and are flourishing in school, said Powell, who recently moved to Los Angeles so she could pursue her doctorate in urban schooling.
Still, every time she looks back on her children’s suspensions, it breaks her heart.
“It’s still very fresh. It’s something that I think about more than I would like to, even when I try to block it,” Powell said. “To tell a child he’s a danger at 3 years old, that is unacceptable. If he remembers even the slightest bit of that, what kind of psychological effect might that even have on him?”
Yes, Preschool Teachers Really Do Treat Black And White Children Totally Differently
“Implicit biases do not begin with black men and police, they begin with young black boys and their preschool teachers, if not earlier.”
09/27/2016 07:30 pm ET | Updated 1 day ago
Rebecca Klein
Education Editor, The Huffington Post
When Tunette Powell’s 4-year-old son first got suspended from his preschool class in 2014, she assumed that she needed to be doing something different as a parent. She had already worked hard to enrich her children’s lives, but she challenged herself to be better.
The second time her son JJ got suspended, Powell began to think that maybe it was “just the fate” of her child. When Powell was in school, she had been suspended many times from a young age, and she began to think, “Maybe the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
Her thinking only turned around after she attended a birthday party for one of her son’s preschool classmates. Powell and her children are black, but most of the other parents at the party were white. When she mentioned to the group that her son had been suspended for behaviors like allegedly throwing a chair, they were shocked. Their kids had committed worse behaviors, but were only punished with a phone call home.
Her younger son, 3-year-old Joah, also faced a number of suspensions at school. Powell began to consider that maybe something more insidious was working against her children.
Tunette Powell’s sons, Joah and JJ.
New research released Tuesday backs up Powell’s suspicions. A two-part study out of the Yale Child Study Center shows that preschool teachers respond to their black and white students differently. Implicit biases ― or unconscious stereotypes ― might be at the root of these differences, researchers found.
The research is the first-of-its-kind at the preschool level, said study author and Yale professor Walter Gilliam. Black children are 3.6 times more likely to receive a suspension in preschool than their white classmates, according to 2013-2014 data from the Department of Education. But, “until now, no research existed to explain why boys or black preschoolers are at greatest risk for expulsion,” Gilliam said on a call with reporters.
The first half of the study used eye-tracking equipment to determine where teachers look when they are expecting student misconduct.
Researchers had 132 educators watch videos featuring a diverse group of students and primed them to expect student misbehavior. Although no misbehavior actually occurred in the videos, teachers tended to focus their eyes on black students. This suggests that educators expected black students to act out more than other students.
In the second half of the study, the educators read vignettes about a child’s misbehavior. All of the educators read the same vignette, but the students’ names were different. Some teachers were told the child had a traditionally black name, like LaToya, while others were told the child had a stereotypically white name, like Emily. After reading the vignette, researchers asked teachers to rate the severity of the child’s misconduct.
White teachers tended to rate the behavior of the “black” children more mildly than black teachers, who tended to rate the misbehavior of black children more harshly. However, when teachers were told that the child faced a difficult home life, black educators tended to view black children with more empathy, while white educators viewed them as more hopeless. On the other hand, when the same scenario occurred for the “white” students, white teachers tended to view the children with more empathy, while black educators viewed them as more hopeless.
There are a few possible explanations for these behaviors, researchers hypothesize. White teachers might have lower expectations for black students, so they might not see a black child’s misbehavior as particularly unusual or severe. On the other hand, white educators might be self-conscious about giving negative reviews to black children, although this would not explain why they seemed to expect misbehavior in the first half of the study. Black educators might be trying to prepare their black students for a harsh world, researchers speculate.
The researchers did not find a relationship between child race or sex and a teacher’s decision to expel or suspend, “contrary to hypotheses,” says the study.
According to Gilliam, a teacher’s implicit biases can have a big impact on a child’s future.
“Implicit bias is like the wind, you can’t see it but you can sure see its effects,” Gilliam said. “Implicit biases do not begin with black men and police, they begin with young black boys and their preschool teachers, if not earlier.”
Implicit bias is like the wind, you can’t see it but you can sure see its effects.
In the study’s conclusion, researchers suggest that preschool teachers get continual training and guidance on this topic. On a call with reporters, early childhood expert and government official Linda Smith said the study’s conclusions are “far too important for us to ignore.”
“The early childhood field has its roots in social justice. We’ve been fighting for a number of years for resources for our most vulnerable children and their families,” said Smith, who is the deputy assistant secretary for early childhood development at the Administration for Children and Families. “The findings presented today present us with a real challenge that all of us know is not new, but one we haven’t really been addressing with the same rigor as some of these other challenges.”
After seeing how implicit biases were playing out in her sons’ lives, Powell began to dedicate her life to fighting them. In total, Powell’s older son, JJ, was suspended three times from preschool, while her younger son, Joah, was suspended eight times.
However, once JJ entered kindergarten, his apparent behavioral problems disappeared. And when her son Joah got different preschool teachers, he seemed to thrive. The children are now 7- and 5-years-old, and are flourishing in school, said Powell, who recently moved to Los Angeles so she could pursue her doctorate in urban schooling.
Still, every time she looks back on her children’s suspensions, it breaks her heart.
“It’s still very fresh. It’s something that I think about more than I would like to, even when I try to block it,” Powell said. “To tell a child he’s a danger at 3 years old, that is unacceptable. If he remembers even the slightest bit of that, what kind of psychological effect might that even have on him?”
The extremes that they are promoting is fucking insane.
he is a faggot.... he needs to die asap...
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